If you have duplicate Flash players, it's a good idea to clean those up.

On Windows 7x64, check this folder:

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash

You want only the latest NPSWF32 DLL file, which as of this moment is:

NPSWF32_11_8_800_94.dll

Delete any earlier NPSWF32files.

If you do not see earlier DLL files here, your Firefox plugin registry file might be corrupted. More on that if needed.

Regarding poor Flash performance, this is some standard guidance that addresses the most common issues. I'm sure you've seen some of it before, but just in case:

(1) Make sure all recorders/downloaders that interact with Flash media are as up-to-date as possible, or disable them.

(2) Disable hardware graphics acceleration in Firefox and in Flash

(A) In Firefox, un-check the box here and restart:

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced > General > "Use hardware acceleration when available"

(B) In Flash, see this support article from Adobe: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html#main_Solve_video_playback_issues

(3) Disable protected mode (Windows Vista/7/8)

See this support article from Adobe under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

Any improvement?

There was only NPSWF32_11_8_800_94.dll in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash.

Here's the contents of that folder.

<DIR> FlashPlayerTrust

 1,543,283    activex.vch

16,096,136 Flash32_11_7_700_224.ocx

       68,730    FlashInstall.log
             856    flashplayer.xpt
   1,861,512   FlashPlayerPlugin_11_8_800_94.exe
      257,416   FlashPlayerUpdateService.exe
      479,112   FlashUtil32_11_7_700_224_ActiveX.dll
      814,472   FlashUtil32_11_7_700_224_ActiveX.exe
      814,984   FlashUtil32_11_8_800_94_Plugin.exe
                47   mms.cfg
 16,166,280   NPSWF32_11_8_800_94.dll
   1,574,323   plugin.vch

So, I guess that means my Firefox plugin registry may be corrupted.

I don't think it has to do with the hardware graphics acceleration you mentioned. I'm running a Core2 Quad 2.4 GHz with 4 GBs of RAM and an Nvidia DeForce 8600 GT with 512 MB of memory.

Er, um, that's Nvidia GeForce. D'oh!

Hi nivlacian, the reason you sometimes need to disable hardware acceleration is not lack of good hardware, but compatibility problems, particularly when drivers are updated.

To clear your plugin registry:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using

Help > Troubleshooting Information > "Show Folder" button

Switch back to Firefox and Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename pluginreg.dat to something like pluginreg.old

Restart Firefox, and your plugins should be re-detected. Are the duplicates eliminated? If not, we might have to poke around on disk to find those older versions...

You can see the path and file name of all installed plugins on the about:plugins page.

I did as you instructed. The dual plugins are still there as before. I also forgot to mention before that Shockwave Flash 9.0 r45 won't update either. What now? It may be this afternoon or evening before I get back to this as I pulled an all nighter doing heavy duty cleaning of my living room. Didn't realize it was morning till I saw the sun in the window.

Thanks for you help too. I appreciate it.

Hi nivlacian, congratulations on the living room! Cleaning the computer should be much easier.

As cor-el noted, you can find all the plugin disk locations using the about:plugins page:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:plugins in the address bar and press Enter.

(2) Scroll down or use Find (Ctrl+f) to find the Shockwave Flash entries. The one in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash is the right one. It's the other one we need to remove.

You can copy the path (up to but not including the NPSWF file name) and paste that in the Start menu search box and press Enter to open that folder.

However, I'm not sure this will fix the problem. My general suggestions for addressing those typical issues was posted earlier in the thread.

Okay, it seems the two rogue flash files were installed in the SysWOW root folder instead of the folders they would normally be in. I don't know how that happened, but I deleted them, restarted Ff and they are gone. So far, every thing seems fine. Pages on ancestry.com, which was giving me the most trouble, load faster now. It stands to reason that with two versions of Flash, there had to be some conflict between them.

Thanks for your help, I am truly grateful. I declare this issue resolved.